Despite Trump's tough talk on the border, migrants are still making the dangerous trip north

President Donald Trump's decision to appoint Homeland Security
Secretary John Kelly as White House chief of staff gave the
president another occasion to tout his administration's efforts
to lock down the US's southern border.

"At Homeland, what he has done has been nothing short of
miraculous," Trump said of
Kelly. "As you know, the border was a tremendous problem, and
they're close to 80 percent stoppage."

According to data published by US Customs and Border Protection,
the DHS agency tasked with border security, the number of
apprehensions and inadmissible persons at the border with Mexico
are considerably lower this year in comparison to previous years.

The number for June, 21,659, was down about 52% from the same
month last year. The total for the first nine months of this
fiscal year, which runs from October to September, was 207,642,
down 49% from the 407,742 recorded over the same period last
year.

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Members of the Reyes family hug as they are reunited for three minutes while US border-patrol agents open a single gate along the US-Mexico border as part of Children's Day, in San Diego, April 30, 2017.

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REUTERS/Mike Blake

Kelly reported in April
that the number of people caught crossing the border illegally in
March, less than 12,500, was the lowest number for that month in
more than 17 years. But that decline, and the low numbers in
other months this calendar year, came even though the Trump
administration made no changes to
how the border was patrolled.

Trump's tough talk, as well as increased arrests of immigrants in
the US, was viewed as likely
responsible for the declines - a theory supported by the
significant increase in apprehensions at the border seen during
the months between when Trump won the election and took office.

But migrants, diplomats, activists, as well as analysis of US
apprehension data, suggested the numbers could go up
again if Trump's aggressive rhetoric about a border wall and
beefed-up border patrol didn't translate into action.

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Christopher Woody/Customs and Border Patrol

Trump has made moves on those goals - allotting money for both
the wall and
new DHS hires - but
"the numbers have been creeping back up," Adam Isacson, senior associate for
defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, told
Business Insider.

Apprehensions were up 9% between May and June this
year.

Apprehensions in "the month of June [are] usually lower than May,
but it was higher this year," Isacson added, noting other signs
that US authorities were dealing with a growing number of
arrivals and apprehensions.

In a mid-July episode of the Green Line podcast, hosted
by border-patrol agents Art Del Cueto and Chris Cabrera, Cabrera
said that the agency had reopened its central processing facility
near McAllen, Texas.

"They opened up this huge building out here in the McAllen area
to deal with the unaccompanied" minors and others who crossed the
US border in massive numbers in 2014, Cabrera said.

"And then fast forward a couple years, Trump wins the election,
and then ... January or February it closed down. It just stopped
- just because the apprehensions were slowed to a trickle. Now
fast forward a couple months, [it's] opened back up."

While overall monthly numbers remain lower than in previous
years, the declines seen over the first few months of the Trump
presidency appear to have stopped.

"So it sounds like what we expected is happening," Isacson
said. "Violence hasn't stopped pushing people out of Central
America. Nor has poverty. Smugglers haven't gone out of business.
So it makes sense that after an initial pause, the flow of
migrants would restart."

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Police investigators and forensic technicians investigate a crime scene where two construction workers were killed in San Salvador, El Salvador, October 12, 2016.

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REUTERS/Jose Cabezas

Experts and
immigrants
themselves said in the months before Trump's inauguration that
tougher border and immigration policies were unlikely to deter
some migrants, who would instead elect to take greater risks,
whether by attempting to cross harsh terrain along the border or
by putting themselves in hands of human traffickers.

"I call it an unfortunate collateral consequence," Alonzo
Peña, former deputy director of US Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, told The Guardian
in July. "They will put themselves in the hands of unscrupulous
criminals that see them as just a commodity."

The deaths of 10 people found
among more than 100 crammed into a sweltering tractor-trailer in
San Antonio, Texas, on July 23 underscore that willingness. (A
day later, four Guatemalans,
including two children, died trying to cross the Rio Grande River
into the US.)

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Immigrants caught crossing the border illegally are housed inside the McAllen Border Patrol Station in McAllen, Texas, July 15, 2014, where they are processed.

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REUTERS/ Rick Loomis/Pool

In addition to hauling numerous people, tractor-trailers
have a logistical advantage for smugglers - getting human cargo
past the "two crossings"
consisting of the border itself and border-patrol checkpoints
farther inland and then transporting them to locations inside the
country.

The San Antonio incident illustrates how deadly such
truck-borne smuggling attempts can be, and other incidents in
Mexico - which has dealt with its own migrant
crisis over the last two years - hint at the prevalence of
that smuggling method.

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A memorial outside of a Walmart near where a tractor-trailer packed with immigrants was found in San Antonio, Texas, July 26, 2017.

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Associated Press/Eric Gay

On July 29, 178 Central American
migrants were rescued from a truck in Tantima, in northern
Veracruz state, after some of the occupants realized they had
been abandoned and escaped to get help.

The next day, 147 migrants - all
from El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras - were rescued in
Veracruz after smugglers forced them out of the tractor-trailer
they were traveling in north to the US border.

Those 325 migrants were "equal to what Border Patrol was
apprehending in an entire day at the entire border in April, the
month that migration 'bottomed out,'" Isacson told Business
Insider. "That Mexico found that many just in Veracruz seems to
indicate that migrants' and smugglers' initial post-Trump 'wait
and see' period is coming to an end."